US millennials driving P2P payments growth

Posted on May 18th, 2017

What direction will the payments industry take over the coming years? It’s a question many financial institutions are pondering as they plan investments and design solutions to target new business and keep their existing customers onboard.

One concept that looks as if it will have a big part to play in the evolution of the sector over the coming years – particularly in the US – is person-to-person payments.

In its latest Trends in Consumer Mobility Report, Bank of America revealed that more than a third (36 percent) of adults in the US now use a P2P payments service. That proportion rises to 62 percent of millennials.

More than four out of ten non-users of these technologies (45 percent) said they had plans to adopt them over the coming year.

When consumers were asked why they started using P2P payments, saving time emerged as the biggest driver of adoption (68 percent), followed by peer influence (48 percent) and new offerings from banks (30 percent).

Nearly one in six people (16 percent) said they wanted to stop using cash and checks.

The research followed Bank of America’s integration of aspects of the Zelle payment experience into its mobile banking app.

Citi, Capital One and Wells Fargo are among the other financial institutions working with Zelle, a digital payments network that allows users to make instant electronic transfers between accounts using a web interface or mobile device.

Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America, said: “Technology is developing faster today than at any time in history, and our newest report demonstrates how consumers are embracing emerging technologies to make sense of their financial lives.

“We were among the first institutions to integrate the features of Zelle this year, and we look forward to developing new innovations that anticipate our customers’ ever-changing needs in the payments space.”